By AMIR EFRATI And JOHN LETZING

Yahoo (YHOO) Inc. Chief Executive Marissa Mayer appears to be holding the ship together.

Yahoo Inc., under the leadership of CEO Marissa Mayer, posted quarterly results that topped analysts' estimates. WSJ's Amir Efrati reports. (Photo: Getty Images)

Six months into Ms. Mayer's tenure at the helm of the Internet company, Yahoo posted an 8% profit drop and a 2% revenue increase for its fourth quarter.

While the results were far from robust—last week rival Google (GOOG) Inc. reported a 22% jump in quarterly revenue, excluding its hardware business—Yahoo beat analysts' expectations and showed its business was holding steady instead of deteriorating.

In response, the Sunnyvale, Calif., company's shares rose 2.9% to $20.90 in after-hours trading, after a 4 p.m. Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ) close at $20.31.

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For Ms. Mayer, the results were enough that the "honeymoon period is going to last at least a couple of more quarters" while investors wait to see progress, said Sameet Sinha, an analyst at B. Riley & Co.

Ms. Mayer was hired from Google last July to turn around struggling Yahoo. While she hasn't explicitly laid out a turnaround strategy, Ms. Mayer has revamped some Yahoo websites such as Yahoo Mail and Flickr, increased employee perks and begun to acquire small companies in order to add talent.

The 37-year-old CEO has also said she wants Yahoo, which owns popular sports, news and entertainment sites, to become a force in mobile-device software for consumers and to provide "customized" content for people based on their interests, background and location.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week, Ms. Mayer said she plans to achieve that vision through "smart partnerships" with other companies. Yahoo, for instance, provides some data for Apple (AAPL) Inc.'s Siri voice-search service on the iPhone, and Ms. Mayer said on Friday that the service helps bring Web traffic to Yahoo sites.

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European Pressphoto Agency

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer speaking at a World Economic Forum session last week in Davos, Switzerland.

While mobile is a "nascent source of revenue for us," Yahoo sites get more than 200 million monthly unique visitors from mobile-device users, Ms. Mayer said on Monday's call following the earnings release. "With any platform shift, revenue always follows users, and mobile will be no different," she said.

Over the quarter, Yahoo's core business of online "display" advertising continued to suffer. Revenue from graphical, interactive and video ads—excluding commissions paid to Yahoo's partners—declined 5% from a year earlier.

But there were some bright spots. Revenue on Yahoo's Web-search site, which is powered by Microsoft (MSFT) Corp.'s Bing search engine, rose 14% from a year ago, excluding commission payouts. Yahoo's revenue from search ads has grown in recent quarters, benefiting from guaranteed payments from Microsoft, which shares ad revenue with Yahoo, and a rise in the number of times people click on the search ads.

Yahoo still faces numerous challenges, including marketers who have expressed a lack of enthusiasm about the company. Ms. Mayer earlier this month met with major U.S. ad agencies to speak about her priorities for improving the company. Agency executives privately said there weren't many details and there is currently more excitement about opportunities with Google and Facebook (FB) Inc.

In addition, Yahoo's most important websites are shrinking, becoming potentially less valuable to advertisers. In December, the company's U.S.-based Web-search, sports, finance and email sites all had 12% to 25% fewer unique visitors compared with a year earlier, according to comScore (SCOR) Inc.

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As a result, Yahoo's share in the online-advertising market is still eroding. Research firm eMarketer Inc. estimates Yahoo captured 8.4% of U.S. online-ad revenue in 2012, compared with 9.6% in 2011 and 12.8% in 2010.

Overall, Yahoo posted fourth-quarter earnings of $272 million, or 23 cents a share, down from $296 million, or 24 cents a share, a year earlier, weighed down by charges stemming from the recent closure of its South Korean business. Revenue increased to $1.35 billion from $1.32 billion.

Yahoo Chief Financial Officer Ken Goldman forecast that in the current quarter, the company would generate $1.07 billion to $1.1 billion in revenue minus commissions paid to partners, roughly equivalent to $1.08 billion a year earlier. For 2013, he forecast $4.5 billion to $4.6 billion in full-year revenue, minus commission payouts, up from $4.46 billion in 2012.

Mr. Goldman's forecast was generally in line with analysts' expectations.

Write to Amir Efrati at amir.efrati@wsj.com and John Letzing at john.letzing@dowjones.com